[horsawlarway]

It takes an astoundingly small amount of effort to buy an automatic weapon in the US and go hurt people.

Or to buy materials to make an explosive device and hurt people.

Frankly, even with AI those are both comically easier than the idea that a person can create something malicious in a lab environment.

And if someone wanted to go that route... There are boat loads of commercially available toxins and poisons.

The goal shouldn't be to neuter exploration and learning. The goal is not to be a fucking hellscape of a society where people want to act like that.

Your argument leads further down the hellscape path.

[skipkey]

Fully automatic weapons are very difficult to buy in the US - it's restricted to 40+ year old weapons, requires a bunch of paperwork, and the local county sheriff can refuse permission.

Now, semi-automatic weapons are easy to get in the states in the US that are still mostly free - but what does that mean? A semi-automatic weapon shoots one round every time you pull the trigger. Just like most weapons that have multi-shot capability for the last couple of hundred years. The difference is, the gas escaping from the round cycles a new round into the chamber rather than you having to mechanically do it via pumping (like a shotgun or a tube-fed 22) or pulling the trigger again (like a revolver), or advancing the round with a handle, like a Remington 700. Semi-automatic weapons are old technology, dating to the turn of the 20th century. If you want to ban semi-automatics, you're basically saying you want to ban anything developed in the last century plus. Which is ok for you to advocate for, just be honest about it.

As for banning explosive devices? Are you going to ban fertilizer, used by basically everyone who has a lawn, and all farmers everywhere? Are you going to ban diesel fuel? If you can't do one of those, you can't ban explosive devices.

[JoshTriplett]

> It takes an astoundingly small amount of effort to buy an automatic weapon in the US and go hurt people.

And we should fix that too.

> Or to buy materials to make an explosive device and hurt people.

That pales in comparison to how many people unaligned AI will hurt.

> The goal is not to be a fucking hellscape of a society where people want to act like that.

With unaligned AI, it doesn't matter what people want the AI to act like, it'll do damage even if it isn't asked to do harm.

[horsawlarway]

> That pales in comparison to how many people unaligned AI will hurt.

Under what argument? In which scenarios? Basically - bullshit. I'm calling bullshit on this argument.

It's easy to hurt people already. The "difficulty" of doing it isn't what's stopping this behavior.

So claiming that we should reform society into a techno-feudal dystopia where the playing field is literally intentionally not level, and "you aren't allowed to compete (and maybe not exist)" is a great way to push more people into the "I'd like to go hurt people" camp.

You are self-prophesying your own fears into existence by acting like you're an incorruptible beacon of good judgement - while subjugating others to your control. That's a system I'd argue should be broken.

[JoshTriplett]

> where the playing field is literally intentionally not level

That's a strawman of what I'm saying. I am explicitly saying I want a level playing field: unaligned AI must not be available to anyone.

[HWR_14]

It is extremely difficult to legally acquire a fully automatic weapon in the US.